You seem to know someone, who knows someone, who knows someone who got laid off recently, the Ee-con-O-mee is not functioning properly it’s engine is limping to the service station just at the bottom of the J curve. it’s not exactly going past long lines of men with begging bowls and pained faces yet, that’s [...]

It’s a long way from a wide apron of superfine sand that tickles toes on mid morning south pacific beaches to the stand on a side show, but there they were, begging to be hit and split. Could it be simpler? One dollar gets you five shots, the balls we throw are the size of [...]

Nobody wanted to give in yet, both parties were at it like chained tigers, big muscular paws lashing out occasionally, but the fury and emotional venom of the customer was being held in check for a counterpunch move. The customer service officer [CSO] had exhausted their list of appropriate responses and behaviours with the customer [...]

We walked along a line of planks slightly less than the width of our feet, really just a bar raised 3 inches off the ground by way of a divider, between asphalt and grass. It was a high school challenge to keep on that bar for the length of the entire building; a good 300 [...]

Black boots on parade, spitted and polished until they’re shiny mirrors. Silver show buttons chiming in the morning like Sunday church bells. Marching round a square, footfalls in unison crunching through breakfast cereal asphalt. Discipline, discipline, discipline. Drilled deeper than Texas. Structure of command – following orders as natural as blinking, aim, fire, shoot as [...]

Aristotle and Plato, long bearded men sitting in circles of dusty stones back in yesteryear- trying to get it all worked out. Logic and reason – overcoming the raw grunt of emotion. Written and transmitted down the dark ages, drinking hemlock in squalid prison for being right and stubborn. Your belief, your philosophy, your bedrock, [...]

Cue news theme and roll, da da da Dah Dah dah dum dah de dee. It peels out of the television like a typewriter on crack cocaine, urgent and forceful, attention seeking, your head whips up from the book or magazine your drowning in or the bit of road your tired of driving down. It’s [...]

He’d been driving them hard now for weeks, down a road that seemed to be made of barbed wire and broken glass, their hearts straining louder than a clapped out diesel motor going up a hill, but they were now tough, armour plated skins as thick as Patton tanks, double insulated against any swoops of [...]

I’m thinking about that great English delicacy derived from the Italian one – Spaghetti on toast, and it’s derivatives – alphabeti spaghetti- where the tubular extensions are formed into letters- supposedly to help kids learn their alphabet. It’s a strange ritual I haven’t done in years. A medium sized tin comes with a ring pull. [...]

Coaching, teaching at the front of a class on a clean swept white board. A marker in hand giving off false chemical ‘get you high’ odours. A drawing manifests in a series of squeaks, swirls and straight lines. Beside it are straight pointers to wobbly words that wring meaning out of the whole thing. Pliant [...]